Etoiles de neige (Snow Stars)
Aubusson tapestry woven by the Berthaut workshop.
No. 7/8.
1962.
Jean Picart le Doux is one of the major driving forces behind the renewal of tapestry. His beginnings in the field date back to 1943: he then produced cartoons for the ocean liner “la Marseillaise”. Close to Lurçat, whom he married to his theories (limited tones, Numbered cartoons,…), he was a founding member of the A.P.C.T. (Association des Peintres-cartonniers de Tapisserie), and soon became a teacher at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts décoratifs. The State commissioned him to produce numerous woven cartoons, most of them at Aubusson and some at the Gobelins; the most spectacular were for the University of Caen, the Théâtre du Mans, the ocean liner France, or the Prefecture of the Creuse,… If Picart le Doux’s designs were close to Lurçat’s, so were his sources of inspiration and themes—but in a more decorative rather than symbolic register, where astral bodies (the sun, the moon, the stars…), elements, nature (wheat, the vine, fish, birds…), humankind, texts,… all coexist. The treatment of winter is carried out at Picart le Doux through chromatic, ornamental clichés (muted shades, brown, black, white) and motifs (bony branches, flake-circles); the eponymous snow stars will be taken up in « Solstice d’hiver » or « Hommage à Vivaldi ». Bibliography : Maurice Bruzeau, Jean Picart le Doux, Murs de soleil, Editions Cercle d’art, 1972, ill. n°122 Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, tapisseries, Musée de Saint-Denis, 1976 Cat. Exp. Jean Picart le Doux, Musée de la Poste, 1980
